Mindset of a LeAgile Leader

  Agile   Business Intelligence   Leadership   Manufacturing   Organizational Project Management   Strategy  

It has been repeatedly observed that Lean and Agile, being two parallel streams of development, are both affecting the shape organizations are taking. These two paths intersect at several points and many researchers have already used them together, at times for specific purposes of organizational performance enhancement and continuous improvement. From Organizational Project Management perspective, PMI has recently embraced agility in project management and have natural snowball effect on program and portfolio management. While we are discussing Organizational Agility on one end, and impacting Organizational Project Management on other, it is the right time to introduce the natural complimentary fusion of agile and lean, as if we start relating them together right from the offset.

It is a natural extension to a series of papers written by the author on introducing the concept of Lean-Agile (LeAgile), firstly in project management beyond the bounds of software projects, even touching upon the most difficult terrain of construction project management (Iqbal, 2015), then focusing on the mind-set of a Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Project Leader (Iqbal, 2016), and now this paper is building on the marriage of Lean and Agile Organizations and its application in Organizational Project Management. This paper will smoothen out the way to address Lean-Agile (LeAgile) in Program and Portfolio Management, in addition to Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Project Management, already touched upon in earlier paper (Iqbal, 2015).

The focus of this webinar is multi-fold. While it tries to relate the organizational advantages of both Lean and Agile, it also endeavours to highlight the similarities and differences between the two, how they can be removed or even synergized, and how can they best be unified bringing in benefits of both the streams. While agile focuses more on enhancing project management, lean is more inclined towards process improvement, which in a sense, has a role within the project as well as the whole organization. This is because of their origins, lean being originated from manufacturing industry and agile from software industry. The fact that advantages of both can be applied on all kinds of organizations and all types of projects, forces us to deliberate more on experimenting with various combinations and areas from strategy and business to organizational project management.

This session will conceptualize a Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Organization taking both prevalent directions, "Organizational Agility" and "Lean Organizations". It will then help understand how Business Value can be achieved by appropriate Strategic Planning and Business Analysis in a Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Organization, and then will establish a link to Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Project, Program and Portfolio Management. This will ultimately help us relate the overall concept of Organizational Project Management to Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Organizations.

This session will give you a unique perspective in the possibility of using lean and agile in unison, not only to all kinds of projects, but at overall organizational project management, as well as a top down view on your organization as a Lean-Agile (LeAgile) Organization. The session will endeavor to link the conceptualizations from top-down as well as bottom-up approaches to enable audience get a wholesome picture of a LeAgile Organization.